Subterms
A letter from Emil Bove III, acting deputy attorney general, accepting the resignation of Danielle R. Sassoon, Manhattan’s acting U.S. attorney, over her refusal to drop the case against Mayor Eric Adams of New York. Mr. Bove takes Ms. Sassoon to task for failing to obey a direct order to end a prosecution he says […] More
Two nearly simultaneous moves by the Trump administration on Monday signaled a new and far more transactional approach to the Justice Department’s handling of corruption cases.In the evening, President Trump signed an executive order halting investigations and prosecutions of corporate corruption in foreign countries, arguing such cases hurt the United States’ competitive edge. “It’s going to mean a lot more business for America,” he said of his decision to pause enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977.Around the same time, a top Justice Department official directed federal prosecutors in Manhattan to drop bribery charges against Mayor Eric Adams of New York. The stated justification for the demand had nothing to do with the evidence in the case and focused instead on politics.The actions on Monday stunned current and former prosecutors and investigators who said the department was abandoning a tradition of holding public officials, corporate executives and others accountable for corruption in favor of an approach built on political or economic expedience.That same day, Mr. Trump pardoned Rod R. Blagojevich, the former Democratic governor of Illinois who was convicted in 2011 of essentially trying to sell a Senate seat that was vacated by President Barack Obama. Mr. Trump had previously commuted Mr. Blagojevich’s sentence.Trump administration officials have also ordered the shutdown of an initiative to seize assets owned by foreign kleptocrats, dialed back scrutiny of foreign influence efforts aimed at the United States and replaced the top career Justice Department official handling corruption cases.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
The 2025 New York City mayor’s race is unusually volatile and will have major consequences for the nation’s largest city. As a Democratic incumbent seeking a second term, Mayor Eric Adams would not typically face a serious primary challenge and would be heavily favored in the general election. But this year is different. Mr. Adams […] More
The Justice Department has asked prosecutors to drop the criminal charges that had loomed over Mayor Eric Adams, but what about all of the continuing investigations involving his close associates?The short answer: Many of the cases have been thrown into uncertainty, and the next steps will largely be decided by prosecutors.The Adams administration has been engulfed by at least five separate federal corruption inquiries. Over the past six months, several City Hall officials have resigned or have had their phones seized by federal agents, destabilizing the highest echelons of New York City’s government.For the people in the mayor’s orbit who may be cooperating against him in hopes of reducing their own criminal exposure, prosecutors could decide to drop any charges against them as well, to avoid any claims of unfair treatment, legal experts said.“Now that the main guy is gone, there will be some level of pressure to reconsider the less-culpable people and decide whether it makes sense to continue to prosecute them,” said Mark Chutkow, a former federal prosecutor in Detroit who supervised corruption cases against local officials.Rana Abbasova, the mayor’s former liaison to the Turkish community, has been cooperating with prosecutors after federal agents searched her home, The New York Times has reported.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
Eric Trump, a son of the president and the top family executive at the Trump Organization, which manages the family’s New York City office buildings, said Mayor Eric Adams of New York had always treated the family company well.His remarks came in a radio interview last week in which he discussed the criminal case against Mr. Adams and the debate over whether the criminal charges against him might be dropped or he would be pardoned by President Trump.“This guy just never, never got in the way,” Eric Trump said in a radio interview last week, referring to Mr. Adams. “He never tried to throw our company out in New York. He was always supportive of everything that we did. And I can appreciate that.”Instead, Eric Trump said in the interview with Sid Rosenberg, on Sid and Friends in the Morning on WABC, that Mr. Adams had been unfairly targeted by the Justice Department because he challenged the Biden administration on immigration issues. Eric Trump did not provide evidence to back up the assertion.“No one believes that they’re indicting somebody over getting an upgraded ticket on Turkish Airways,” Eric Trump said, referring incorrectly to Turkish Airlines. Mr. Adams is accused of receiving thousands of dollars’ worth of travel benefits over several years, including upgrades on Turkish Airlines. “And I can also appreciate somebody that had the guts to go against the Washington, D.C., machine.”Eric Trump participated in the meeting that President Trump had last month at Mar-a-Lago with Mr. Adams. The mayor said after the meeting that the criminal case was not discussed, but people briefed on the meeting said Mr. Trump did speak generally about what he described as the “weaponized” Justice Department. More
The imminent closure reflects concern from New York City officials that President-elect Donald J. Trump will target the shelter because it sits on federal land.New York City officials announced on Tuesday that they will close a giant tent complex in Brooklyn that houses some 2,000 migrants, a pre-emptive step meant to fend off concerns that the shelter could be targeted by the Trump administration.Because the shelter, on Floyd Bennett Field, was built on federal land, the administration of Mayor Eric Adams increasingly feared that President-elect Donald J. Trump would revoke the shelter’s lease once he takes office in January — or assert the administration’s right to launch immigration raids on federal land.The Floyd Bennett Field shelter is among 25 shelters that will now shut down by March because of a steady decline in the number of migrants arriving over the past five months. Those include hotels across the city, two college dormitories in Upper Manhattan and a warehouse-turned-shelter at Kennedy Airport, as well as 10 hotels the city was paying to house migrants upstate.The slate of closures was yet another signal of how the city’s migrant crisis, which prompted the city to spend more than $6 billion over two years to house migrants, has continued to wind down. Mr. Adams, a Democrat who has been cautious about antagonizing Mr. Trump, did not name the president-elect as a reason for the closure of the Floyd Bennett Field shelter, the only one in New York City on federal land.City officials said that the lease would end by March, but that families would be moved out of the shelter by Jan. 15, just a few days before Mr. Trump is sworn into office.“We’re going to continue looking for more sites to consolidate and close, and more opportunities to save taxpayer money, as we continue to successfully manage this response,” Mr. Adams said in a statement.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
The lawsuit charges that Mayor Eric Adams exceeded his authority when he declared a state of emergency to block a ban on the practice in city jails.The New York City Council filed a lawsuit on Monday seeking to force Mayor Eric Adams to carry out a law banning solitary confinement in city jails.The lawsuit, filed in State Supreme Court, argues that the mayor went beyond his legal authority when he blocked the law earlier this year using emergency executive orders.“Mayor Adams’s emergency orders are an unlawful and unprecedented abuse of power,” Adrienne Adams, the City Council speaker, said in a statement.It is the latest escalation of tensions between Mr. Adams and Ms. Adams, who are not related. They have disagreed over housing policies, a law to document more police stops, budget cuts to libraries, and closing the Rikers Island jail complex, among other issues.The City Council approved a bill last December banning solitary confinement in most cases in city jails, arguing that the practice amounted to torture. Mr. Adams vetoed the bill, and the Council overrode his veto.In July, on the day before the law was set to go into effect, Mr. Adams declared a state of emergency and issued an order that blocked key parts of the law. The mayor has repeatedly extended the emergency declaration.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
I would prefer to live in a world where the recent news that more than 146,000 New York City schoolchildren experienced homelessness during the last school year was regarded as a crisis demanding immediate changes in public policy. But if helping children isn’t enough to move New York’s political leaders to action — and, by all indications, it most certainly is not — they might consider doing it for the sake of the Democratic Party.There is a straight line from homeless schoolchildren to Donald Trump’s election victory.Homelessness is the most extreme manifestation of the nation’s housing crisis. America simply isn’t building enough housing, which has driven up prices, which has made it difficult for millions of households to keep up with monthly rent or mortgage payments. Every year, some of those people suffer at least a brief period of homelessness.Popular anger about the high cost of housing, which is by far the largest expense for most American households, helped to fuel Mr. Trump’s comeback. He recorded his strongest gains compared with the 2020 election in the areas where living costs are highest, according to an analysis by the Economic Innovation Group, a nonpartisan think tank.The results are more than a backlash against the party that happened to be in power. The animating principle of the Democratic Party is that government can improve the lives of the American people. The housing crisis is manifest proof that government is failing to do so. And it surely has not escaped the attention of the electorate that the crisis is most acute in New York City, Los Angeles and other places long governed by Democrats.Republicans promise to cut taxes and they cut taxes. Democrats promise to use tax dollars to solve problems and one in eight public school students in New York experienced homelessness last year. It is the ninth straight year the number of homeless schoolchildren in New York topped 100,000.The good news is that Democrats still have the power to do better. While the party will soon be sidelined in Washington, it is primarily local and state laws that impede home building, including zoning laws that limit development, building codes that raise costs and local control measures that give existing residents the power to prevent growth.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
